McKay personifies America as a woman who feeds him "bread and bitterness" and who sinks her "tiger's tooth" into his throat. By using the pronouns she and her to refer to America, McKay turns the concept of a country into a person who can cause the narrator harm even while he loves her. The effect of this personification turns the relationship between the narrator and his country into a more personal relationship, full of the conflicting emotions that come along with loving a person.
The purpose of JFKs condensed history in the Rice "Moon Speech" was to show that major achievements are made when difficult goals are established. He goes back as far as 1630 to describe a political goal and brings that goal to the present; that the dominant power in space should be that which is politically free. Kennedy establishes that by "upping the ante" in the space race, we are creating a goal worthy of American society. He was gambling that the USSR had reached their short-term limit with manned LEO activity, where US technology was sufficient to go to the moon. A proxy war to beat all proxy wars.
